Automattic, the creator of WordPress.com, has expanded into the education sector with a new, free offering called WordPress.com Education. This product is designed for teachers and their classes, providing a suite of tools for website building.
The program grants each student a full WordPress.com domain, along with free domain names on either the .blog or .art domains, and plug-in support. Teachers can provide students with access to the program for free for the initial year, without requiring a credit card or trial.
The new Student plan is not a simplified version, including 6 GB of storage, backups, staging sites, and support for plugins, SFTP/SSH, phpMyAdmin, and Studio Sync. After the first year, students have the option to subscribe to the service for $2 per month. If they choose not to subscribe, their site will transition to a free WordPress.com site on a free domain, with all content remaining intact.
A pilot program involving 5,000 students across 27 countries indicated that 88.9% of educators believed access to the program improved students' employability, and 81.5% reported an improvement in students' entrepreneurial capacity.